Robin Milner, FRS FRSE
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science
It is with great sadness that we note the death of Robin Milner.
Robin worked at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge from 1995 onwards, serving as Head of the Laboratory 1996–1999. Before that, he worked at the University of Edinburgh 1973–1994, where he was founding Director of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS). He was awarded the Turing Award in 1991.
Robin played a leading role in the development of many areas of Computer Science, focussing especially on its mathematical foundations but always with a sharp eye on practice. His intellectual legacy includes:
- machine-assisted proof construction with the LCF approach, underpinning the HOL and Isabelle/HOL provers;
- the design and formal definition of programming languages, especially of Standard ML, including work on type safety, type inference and module systems;
- models of concurrent computation, particularly with the CCS and Pi-Calculus process calculi and their theories of compositional reasoning; and
- the bigraph model of mobile informatic processes with its applications to bioinformatics and pervasive computing.
These provide the basis and tools for a great deal of current research, by many people worldwide.
Always an inspirational teacher and colleague, and a warm-hearted man, he will be greatly missed.
Obituaries
Events
- CONCUR 2010 (Paris) held a special Milner Session on Wednesday 1 September, chaired by Matthew Hennessy and with an introduction by Jos Baeten 2010.
-
MFPS 2010 (Ottowa) held a session honouring Robin's work with talks by Robert
Harper and Samson Abramsky
- Robin Milner’s Work on Concurrency Samson Abramsky
-
POPL 2011 held a special invited session
Robin Milner
1934-2010: Verification, Languages, and Concurrency, with talks
about his life and work by Andy Gordon, Peter Sewell, Bob Harper, John
Harrison, and Alan Jeffrey:
- Prologue
- Robin Milner: Elements of Interaction, Peter Sewell
- Robin Milner, 1934-2010: His work in theorem proving and verification, John Harrison
- Robin Milner, FRS, Robert Harper
- Robin Milner 1934-2010: Concurrency: interaction, bisimulation, naming, Alan Jeffrey
- Robin and POPL, Andy Gordon
- There will be a Milner Symposium in Edinburgh, 16-18 April 2012